Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. Every crazy, weird and wacky quote is straight from the pens of Armstrongite leaders or members who think they possess some insight into God and the Bible. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Gerald Flurry and the Philadelphia Church of God Struggle To Keep Members Under Control

Gerald Flurry and the Philadelphia Church of God continue to struggle with members who are catching on to his lies and are speaking out to family members. Flurry's degenerate policies and doctrines have led to countless broken marriages, suicides and other deaths. The Internet has become a hostile environment for the Philadelphia Church of God. Their sick policies continue to be exposed daily for all the world to see.

In an article recently published on how the PCG is preserving "pure religion" Lil'Joel Hiliker writes the following:

Despite God’s commands, at times the Israelites descended into
idolatry. Anticipating this, God gave laws on what to do to ensure it
didn’t spread. Again, His goal was to keep the nation and its religion
pure!

These laws directly correlate to New Testament commands
about what to do when a Church member embraces dissident material or
tries to pollute the true religion (see, for example, Romans 16:17;
Galatians 1:8-9; 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14; 1 Timothy 3:5; 6:5; Titus
3:10-11; 2 John 10-11). God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He
is just as concerned about purity in the congregation today as He was
anciently—and, spiritually, He deals with the problem today the same as
He did anciently.Contemplate how the principle in Deuteronomy
13:1‑4 should inform the way we handle a message from a religious source
that does not represent the true God. Do not treat that message—whether it be a letter, e-mail, booklet, cd, television program, phone call or personal visit—casually! It is, in fact, a test: How much do you love God? He is jealous, and wants to keep your relationship with Him pure!

Everything in Armstrongism always had to be some kind of "test" that most church members failed at horribly. That's why we were constantly bellowed at by Herbert Armstrong and the ministry. We could never pass the "test" becasue we "never got it."

Read in verse 5 how God instructed the Israelites to deal with those who tried to turn His people away from Him.Some people criticize God’s Church today for disfellowshiping and marking certain people. But consider how merciful that
instruction from God is for New Testament Christians (e.g. Romans
16:17) compared to the law for unconverted physical Israel. Today, a
Spirit-begotten Christian who turns to heresy has his eternal life on the line—and God wants to give him every opportunity to repent!

Read
in Deuteronomy 13:6-7 of the far more difficult matter of close friends
or family members coming secretly to peddle dissident ideas or
material. The natural tendency in such circumstances is to do
nothing: to reason that everything will be fine; that we can just pray
about it; that it’s not really our business; that we shouldn’t “tell”
and get the person in trouble; that we don’t want to break their
confidence. Deeply contemplate God’s answer in verse 8. Don’t be
acquiescent, don’t listen, don’t give him any attention, don’t be
compassionate, don’t commiserate, don’t listen to his arguments why he’s
really innocent, God says. And don’t try to cover the matter up, hide
it, be secretive about it, or hope it will go away! You must bring this
out into the open and let the ministry know!

To see how serious God is about keeping His people pure, read His command to ancient Israel in verses 9-11. God
wanted the family member to be the first to put the seducer to death!
Surely this reinforces the responsibility each of us has to watch out
for and to help those we are close to—to love them enough to encourage
him or her to stay close to God! If you have questions, talk to God’s
ministry. If someone close to you has questions, encourage them to go to
the ministry. If it’s a serious question that could lead to problems,
and he won’t go—then you go! Love that person enough to go!

Study
verses 12-16 to see how God dealt with rumors of idolaters in an
Israelite city in order to ensure that all Israel remained free and pure
of idolatry. Consider the profound effect this law would have had
on the Israelites had they kept it. It would have put a great deal of
responsibility on people to ensure their city remained free of idolatry!
If they heard rumors about idolatry in their city, they couldn’t simply
dismiss them and say, Well, that’s their business. If they did that, they too could end up being killed! Everyone needed to be vigilant to prevent idolatry from spreading!

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

...what to do when a Church member embraces dissident material or tries to pollute the true religion...

This is, indeed, a very important topic. Too many people did embrace Gerald Flurry's dissident material that he sent out to try to deceive and ensnare Worldwide Church of God members with his heretical teachings that polluted what Herbert W. Armstrong had taught.

Do not treat that message—whether it be a letter, e-mail, booklet, cd, television program, phone call or personal visit—casually! It is, in fact, a test:....

I totally agree. Too many people failed the test and carelessly fell for Gerald Flurry's plagiarized message book, new anti-gospel commission, That Prophet identity theft, anti-Elijah family wrecking, sexual immorality, lying and slandering, etc. Maybe they had carelessly assumed that Gerald Flurry had given them the correct answers to the test so they could easily cheat their way through it, and did not realise that Gerald had maliciously given them all the wrong answers.

Some people criticize God’s Church today for disfellowshiping and marking certain people.

Yes, Gerald Flurry did criticize the Worldwide Church of God when even the Tkaches in it could still recognize a drunken nut case like Flurry for what he was and disfellowshipped him when the little runt came to them blubbering about wanting to take over the WCG with his own nonsense.

Some people criticize satanic cults like the PCG for keeping lying, slandering sex perverts and predators while getting rid of their victims. Of course, such things are being done by Satan's PCG cult, not by God's church.

...the far more difficult matter of close friends or family members coming secretly to peddle dissident ideas or material.

PCG members who threaten to cut off all contact with all friends and even close family members who refuse to join them in following a satanic impostor like Gerald Flurry and his dissident ideas and material that he calls “new revelation” are behaving in a truly shameful way that could quickly come back to bite these PCG donkeys on their butts for being such asses.

Don’t be acquiescent, don’t listen, don’t give him any attention, don’t be compassionate, don’t commiserate, don’t listen to his arguments why he’s really innocent, God says. And don’t try to cover the matter up, hide it, be secretive about it, or hope it will go away! You must bring this out into the open and let the ministry know!

This sounds like a great idea. Let Satan's “ministers” (or more correctly, abusers) in Satan's PCG cult know clearly without beating around the bush that you are wise to them and their satanic tricks. Do not listen to their insane arguments about why doing evil (especially to family members) is good and why doing good (especially to family members) is evil.

God wanted the family member to be the first to put the seducer to death!

I suspect that some family members too would like to punish seducing false prophets like Gerald Flurry for deceiving and harming their friends and relatives, making massive changes to HWA's teachings while pretending to stand up for them, and causing so much ignorance and division with his “no contact” rules.

Love that person enough to go!

Love yourself enough to learn the truth and run away from false prophets like Gerald Flurry.

Everyone needed to be vigilant to prevent idolatry from spreading!

This is so true. If all Worldwide Church of God members had been diligent in the past, Gerald Flurry's runt-worshipping idolatry with its numerous names, titles, offices and positions to remember would not have spread.

Many of us have been turning this Armstrongism thing over, and over, and over again in our minds, for decades now. Let's face it, Armstrongism was a very powerful modifier, to our detriment, in so many ways that are so difficult to shed.

How did they get away with it? I'm convinced that the two great innate needs we would have from our Supreme Being are 1) Enlightenment, and 2) Transformation. The first would provide a deeper sense of our own individual roles in the cosmos, and the second would free us from the negative portion of our human emotions, leading to optimized behavior and relationships.

The problem is this. Teachers can fake these. How so? The enlightenment is faked by pretending to know things that humans cannot. This is where fake prophecy and select conspiracy theories come into play. Or, supposed "doors" opening up to those aspiring to lead us. Or "attacks from Satan". This enlightenment supposedly happens only to the leaders, and only percolates down to the "dumb sheep" through acceptance of these leaders and all that they say.

Transformation is faked by the enforcement of laws, rules, and regulations, and participation by the sheep occurs through brute and voluntary will power because they have accepted the aspiring leaders as having been enlightened. The sheep pay and obey.

This is all fine and good logic, of a sort, and for some people tracks well. But what would you say to people who give the leaders a pass, even though they know that the prophecies continue to fail, the conspiracy theories are readily disprovable, and the leaders have not been transformed themselves from such activities as incest, sexual promiscuousness, gluttony, alcoholism, arrogance, cruel authoritarianism, racism, and a basic sense of entitlement? That is where just a modicum of objective thinking would work wonders.

It is not possible to fulfill either great need, enlightenment, or transformation through Armstrongism. You can alter your behavior in some ways, so that you don't suffer the full impact of some of the things happening in your community. You can alter your world view, tilting it towards the negative. And, you can alter your financial picture. You can even voluntarily accept another whole layer of authority in your life that non-members do not have in their lives. But, it is all an illusion, because the leaders' continued failures prove that they are an unenlightened source.